I need to solicit major feedback from veteran Wikibookians and the
public in general about this, as I am about to propose a major policy
overhaul. As you know, Wikibooks policy is rarely strictly enforced,
with [[User:Aya]] pointing out that many of our existing policies are
vaguely defined and self-contradictory, and that [[User:Rob Horning]]
showing that sometimes good material may be left without a home (see
debate on [[Biography of Nikola Tesla]]).
As such, I propose to the world at large a change in how we define
what Wikibooks actually is besides from [[WB:WIN]]:
The two basic parts of Wikibooks as we know it is the form of a book
and the concept of what constitutes instructional material. These
should be canonized into [[Wikibooks:Books]] and
[[Wikibooks:Instructional material]] (hereby referred to as
[[WB:IM]]). However, new Wikibookians (or Wikipedia ex-patriates)
may want to create (or may have created) books that are not that
instructional (but remain nonfiction). If we were to make such a
radical overhaul, we might as well broaden the scope of Wikibooks and
add [[Wikibooks:Reference material]] (hereby referred to as
[[WB:RM]]). Hopefully the three will be more of a solid guideline as
to what constitutes a book.
As for organizing books, we need [[Wikibooks:Bookshelf]] for the
basic concept of a bookshelf, as well as "the first Wikibooks
WikiProject", [[Wikibooks:WikiProject Librarian]], for users that
wish to organize, categorize, and otherwise "stock bookshelves" as
new books are made.
We shall also need to overhaul [[WB:MOS]] and [[WB:NC]] to anchor a
uniform appearance across all books. [[WB:HNS]] is to be adopted and
only colon or slash (slash recommended) separators are permitted.
[[WB:MOS]] is to be expanded to cover the following:
* MOS for cover pages ([[Cookbook]], [[Programming]], [[Pokémon]], etc)
* stating that each book has its own MOS that must conform to the
main MOS and [[WB:NC]]
* MOS for general wiki formatting
Feedback among the community is generally appreciated.